The key to the Mustangs 2016 season is the development of their 5th-7th runners, who had excellent track seasons.
Cross country is right around the corner, and we're celebrating by counting down to the start of the competitive fall season! Each day (except today!) we'll release one boys team and one girls team, counting down from 30 to 1 as we approach the beginning of real XC racing.
Mira Costa was a hard team to place in these rankings. The Mustangs finished 9th in Division 2 last fall, and they lost two runners from that squad to graduation. They have the 11th-best returning 5K times in the state, but only come in 28th in returning 3 Mile rankings. Mira Costa had very good team track results, posting the 10th-best returning 1600 average in the state. When you dig into that a little bit more, you see why I'm so high on this year's Mustangs: the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th times on their 1600 list from the spring were the 6th, 7th, and 5th runners on the team last fall. All three of them (Emily Jones, Seirra Andrade, and Brooke Inouye) broke 5:20 after running above 19 minutes last fall; you can expect them to go well under that mark this season, and that will make this a formidable team. Mira Costa looks like a lock to be in the top 10 of Division 2 again, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the Mustangs make the top 5.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 11th (5K)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 14th (18th 3200, 10th 1600)
- Improvement Rating: 18th
The #CountdownToXC is a data-driven set of team rankings determined using the following information:
- Returning Team 5K & 3 Mile Rankings from 2015 XC: carries the most weight
- Returning Team 1600 and 3200 Rankings from 2015 Outdoor: less weight, but important
- Improvement Rating: a long-term statistical evaluation of how each program improves from season to season. This custom metric compares a team's final team average from each season to their returning team average from the previous season, while also accounting for how highly-ranked the team was. As we continue to improve the depth and quality of our data in California, this measure should get stronger and stronger. Improvement ratings will be the subject of a separate article in August.
- Returning team from the 2015 CIF state meet
- A little bit of "gut feeling"